Traditional art and sketching

Peruse our Sketching from the Imagination series, start your own sketch journal, or try your hand at clay sculpting! If you’re a complete beginner looking for a new hobby, or even an experienced artist looking for inspiration and workflow insights, our traditional art and sketching resources have plenty to offer!

3D digital art

Covering a wide variety of software and approaches, our books, magazines, and eBooks are there to offer you the support and motivation you need. Whether you want to sculpt a monster in ZBrush or create a stylized character in 3ds Max, take a look at our range to start your next project!

In the very first issue you will be treated to an introduction to the 3dtotal team, and an insight into some of the projects we are working on at the moment. Additionally you can enjoy some of our sci-fi themed articles and tutorials which we hope will help take your own work to the next step.

Another month, another issue packed with great content! This time we’re catching up with great character and concept artists like Marco Plouffe, Elijah McNeal and Ran Manolov, whose work and words are sure to get your mind buzzing with inspiration. If you’re interested in mobile apps, we take a look at a great project by Jeremy Kool.

Senior Environment Artist at Codemasters, Andrew Finch, reveals how to make playable levels for games using the Unreal Development Kit (UDK). Whether you are looking to create a stunning portfolio piece or just fancy trying something new, this step-by-step project guide will give you a fantastic grounding in the UDK to set you on the right foot for your future game-creation adventures!

Camilo Duarte Franco, a feature film animator at MPC, reveals how to create convincing character movement, including walking, climbing stairs, running and jumping, 'sneak' movements and pushing weight. In this six-chapter e-book you'll discover detailed industry standard techniques plus helpful downloadable video tutorials to further explain the software processes and pro tips for you to apply to your own work.

This month, it is time to get started on some exciting new projects! Learn how to create a strong basis for your images with previz guidance to help you develop photoreal scenes and classic cars. You can also find out how to turn your photographs into perfect tillable textures with our guide to creating a texture library.

This issue's awesome cover image is the creation of Pedro Conti, who created this character for the short animation One More Beer, which the talented 3D artist talked to us about when we caught up with him for this month's interview.

The stunning image, which stands strong on our cover, is the result of Ali Zafati taking on the creative challenge of making his own quadruped. In our ZBrush Quadrupeds series our brilliant artists have been given complete creative freedom to show us how to create the organic forms of their quadrupeds. Ali covers everything from concept through to the final illustration as he demonstrates how to create this powerful creature.

This month we bring you part one of a brilliant new tutorial series, by Andrew Hickinbottom, a talented and experienced character modeler, with a penchant for stylized pin-up girls. In this series Andrew will cover modeling, UV'ing, texturing, lighting, creating the background and post-production. Andrew kicks things off in this chapter by talking us through the modeling of his character ‘Olivia', who beautifully graces the cover.

Let's get started with this issue's stunning cover by Daniel Bystedt, which is the first installment to brand new tutorial series: ZBrush Quadrapeds. ZBrush is an impressive piece of software that can accomplish so much. With endless possibilities, your imagination is the limit. In this series our brilliant artists have been given complete creative freedom to show us how to create the organic forms of their quadrapeds, and Daniel is the first to get the ball rolling!

Let's start things off with the awesome image on the cover of this issue, which was created by the talented Andrei Szasz for our Building Droids series. As ever this series proves to be an priceless source of tips and tricks, as Andrei turns a concept for a recon droid into a 3D model using 3ds Max. Sharing his step-by-step approach to modeling the droid, he talks us through how to create each part using tools and simple techniques.

We'll start by considering the fantastic image that graces the cover of this month's issue, which was created by the talented Oleg Nikolov. References and a solid design are always important when it comes to fantasy creatures and Oleg explains how his design concept for Bagpiper was influenced by Bulgarian folklore, while also covering how he used ZBrush extensively to model and pose his mystical character.

Let's kick things off with the brilliant cover image, which is part of our building droids series. We provided Victoria Passariello with a 2D concept and technical drawings and she shows us how to build an accurate 3D model of her very useful repair droid.